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Romey, Inc.

Romey, Inc., is an international family-owned and -operated beauty products distribution business with multiple facilities in Puerto Rico and the United States.

Executive Summary

Romey, Inc., is an international family-owned and -operated beauty products distribution business with multiple facilities in Puerto Rico and the United States.

Recipient of the Community Member of the Year Award, xTupleCon 2013.

Users can access Inventory Management, Accounting and Customer Service modules with one database.

Problems

Jared and Dustin Romey initially chose QuickBooks® for Mac when their beauty supply distribution business began. However, they were quickly frustrated by the inaccessibility of their data. Their reporting requirements could not be met by QuickBooks®. They were forced to create numerous spreadsheets to manage inventory and customer information data for which there was no place with QuickBooks®.

They needed better accounting software — and much more.

Solutions

Romey, Inc., needed real Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. They needed to combine multiple functions into one integrated database which would provide data accessibility across multiple disciplines within their company.

They didn’t want to spend tens of thousands of dollars, and they wanted something Mac-based that could also be used by the Windows-based systems at the company. Romey was interested in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) which would cost much less and eliminate the Mac-Windows problem. They found xTuple.

Results

xTuple offered a complete ERP solution that addressed the business requirements of Inventory Management, Accounting and Customer Service — all in one database. Mac and Windows users alike could access the system.

xTuple’s Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) version, PostBooks®, fit nicely into Romey’s budget. With no licensing fee, Romey, Inc., could spend their money on relevant add-ons and training and focus on growing their business.

Benefits

xTuple's PostBooks addressed the company's financial and business management needs

Users can access Inventory Management, Accounting and Customer Service modules with one database

Both Mac and Windows users can utilize xTuple software

Low cost of xTuple has allowed for investment in other facets of the company in order to build distribution facilities in both Puerto Rico and Miami, Florida (USA)

QuickBooks® Data Migration (Best tip ever! Thanks to Romey, Inc.)

QuickBooks® Data Migration (Best tip ever! Thanks to Romey, Inc.)

"My name's Dustin Romey; my job title is vice president, but I'm really just a partner with my brother in a company called Romey, Inc., founded in 2005; we're a wholesale distributor in Puerto Rico, and we distribute mostly beauty products, but a pretty wide variety of different products."

"We really were trying to just get more information. We were working with QuickBooks®, and we were having a hard time getting information in and out, and being able to do anything other than just our accounting, and generating invoices. So we wanted a little bit more ability to do some reporting and..."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "Inventory management? All in one system."

"Exactly."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "What other solutions have you used in the past, besides QuickBooks®?"

"QuickBooks®. In a past life, working at a government contractor, I was a user of Deltek Costpoint."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "What was attractive to you about xTuple?"

"Really it was, I started working with it, playing with it, and realizing I could do something on my own, and that, coupled with the training I was able to get from xTuple led me down a path being able to do a lot of things we couldn't have done with the size we were at the time."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "What's been your biggest surprise about working with xTuple? Working with or using the application?"

"Flexibility really. Day-to-day we can do a lot within the system. And so, with most of our users, we can work to have them do whatever we need within the system. And then when we have some other data need, or whatever, it's just there in the database. We just go and grab it and put it into Excel and twerk it around as we need to analyze what we need in the business, and that's been a really great advantage — that we, I don't think we would have gotten with most of the other things."

"I would say, if you're looking for something, and you're concerned about migrating your data — the biggest thing is — you don't need history as much as you think you're going to."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "Thank you!"

"Had I done things differently from when we did our implementation I, and looking back on it we did it mid-year, and I would have been better off leaving everything outside and dealing with reconciling my accounting free for the next few months into the new year. Because you know, we spend inordinate amount of time trying to get everything from that year in, and a lot of time trying to get past years in as well, and just, we've never used it."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "To what end, right? Exactly."

"We've never used any of it, and I used to spend hours doing that. We've never used it."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "And you could have just, theoretically, left it where it was. If you ever needed to refer to it, but you thought that it was something you might need to build."

"Yeah, I was wanting to report against past years and trends. And I haven't used it."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "Just not worth it! Yeah, exactly."

"It's there, but I've never used it."

Interviewer [Danielle Kerner]: "Honestly, that is probably the best tip."